When You Were Young
by LookToYourLeft
Summary: Or, alternatively: Five-Times-Harry-Declared-Sherlock-His-Friend-And- One-Time-Sherlock-Declared-It-Himself. A study of a friendship based on mutual loneliness, an uncanny ability to bump into each other at significant points in their lives, and Doctor Who. (No pairing, multi-chapter.)
1. That Thing Called A Prologue

**Title: When You Were Young (Or, alternatively: _Five Times Harry Declared Sherlock His Friend, And One Time Sherlock Declared It Himself._)**

**Fandom(s): BBC Sherlock, Harry Potter Series.**

**Disclaimer: After checking my passport, many revealing spells and identity charms, not to mention a deduction of my life or two, I can confirm – with regret – that I am not J.K. Rowling, or Mark Gatiss, or Steven Moffat, or any of them other talented arseholes.**

**Author's Notes: Yes, hello! Guess who's back? Yep, I've got other stuff I should be working on, but _sorry boys, I'm SO changeable!_ Anyway, as it would get _boring_ if I commented on every chapter, I thought I'd just get things all out of the way now, on this prologue/sneak-peak/whatever, rather than wee little bits on each page. ****This was inspired by a lot of things. One thing, of course, would be the series' themselves. I consider myself a proud life-long Potterhead and Sherlockian (and a Whovian, but what do you expect, I'm _British_). Another was The Killer's song, which I named this after, 'When You Were Young'.**

**But mostly, it was because of a dream I had, where two little boys (one dressed in rags, the other in riches) who were facing each other, sat on different ends of a park bench. ****It was a strange dream, and I can't remember what they were talking about but… I couldn't just dream something like _that_ and just _leave_ it, could I? ****Anyway, I would love to see Harry and Sherlock being friends. It would be an interesting thing to read about – their interaction, I mean. Harry isn't a John, but it would be slightly alike, I suppose, yet not quite the head-in-the-fridge-how-can-you-not-know-about-The- Solar-System dynamic that those two have. Oh, those two… Sherlock and John, I'm talking about.**

**Who cares about romance, I just want their friendship!**

**Anyway, I'm getting off topic, which is a clear sign that I need to _stop._ So, happy reading! **

**(Not much in this chapter, but _no worries,_ it's only the intro.)**

* * *

Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes were different.

Of course, they were both different in…well, different ways, but still.

Different.

Five times they met as two-boys-who-just-so-happened-to-know-each-other, before eventually becoming friends. It was a rather unnecessarily overcomplicated, yet somehow so straightforward friendship, but a friendship all the same.

It confused the world around them, but then again – what with Harry's life and Sherlock's attitude – why should they care what the world thought?

The people that mind don't matter, and the people that matter don't mind.

And that's the way things always should be.

Freaks have got to stick together, after all.


	2. That One That Was In The Park

_The first time, it was more of a timid request, really._

"Your Mummy and Father are dead, aren't they?"

Harry Potter almost jumped out of his skin.

He had been sitting on a bench in the local park, legs swinging back and forth, about a foot above the grassy ground. Dudley was not too far away, in the actual 'park' bit of the unnervingly neat place – it almost looked like Aunt Petunia had been at it. But, then again, so did every area in Little Whinging.

Speaking of Aunt Petunia, she was the reason Harry was here in the first place.

(Well, it was Dudley's, by extension, but that wasn't the point.)

With it being a Saturday, and Piers Polkiss visiting family in America, Dudley was left with nothing to do. After first stuffing his three-chinned face with everything he could find in the fridge, and declaring every channel on the new television to be 'boring', he had started to whine at his mother for something to entertain him and his impressively short attention span.

So, Aunt Petunia took him to the park, and (so as not to give the neighbours the wrong impression – Mrs Number Eight had been nosing at them lately) since Uncle Vernon was still at work, Harry had to come along too. She was now sitting a few benches away, pretending not to know her unwanted nephew, occasionally sparing him a furious glare – all while pretending not to notice as her son pushed other children over in the sandbox, laughing stupidly.

Or, at least, stupidly in Harry's opinion.

Harry had long since stopped being jealous of his exceedingly overweight cousin. Sure, it was ridiculously unfair that the boy got two bedrooms, while Harry was shoved into a tiny, musty old cupboard. Yes, maybe it was not okay that Harry got the baggy, worn, second-hand clothes while Dudley claimed all of the new clothes.

And the toys.

And the food.

Harry was certain that Dudley would try and steal _the air he breathed_ if the boy knew how.

But no, he had stopped being jealous a long while ago.

If having all of that would make Harry into a tubby, mean bully of a cherub… well, he would have to pass on that, _thankyouverymuch_.

Still, it didn't stop him from feeling sad, though.

It wasn't the mountain of chores that made him feel that way. It wasn't the clothes, or the toys, or the food. It wasn't even the damned bedrooms that provoked the emotion in him. It was the way Aunt Petunia clutched Dudley's sausage-like fingers with her body ones, like he was a lifeline. Or when he looked through the crack in his cupboard door, and saw Uncle Vernon shake Dudley's broad shoulders in fond pride.

Sometimes, it wasn't even the Dursleys that made him feel like that. Sometimes, it was random people in the street, or at school, or wherever else a father ruffles his son's hair, or a mother embraces her daughter. Or, in this case, a park. Harry knew what was feeling sad about, but never truly acknowledged it. If Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon _were_ telling the truth about his parents, it wouldn't have been like that anyway.

But, still, sometimes he wondered.

Like just then.

In the park.

On his bench.

Thinking.

And then, suddenly, _unexpectedly_, someone was talking right next to Harry, and he almost had a heart attack.

Swivelling his head around – so fast that he took his upper body with him, and nearly tumbled off of his Thinking Bench – Harry turned to look at the someone who'd just spoke. It was a boy, and he was sitting crossed-legged on the other side of the bench, facing him, and staring intently at his face.

"W-What?" Harry asked, bewildered, completely forgetting Aunt Petunia's screeching about 'not talking to respectable strangers'.

"Your Mummy and Father, they're dead, aren't they?" said the boy, like he didn't like to repeat himself, "You keep looking at all the other children, and their Mummies and Fathers, and you look sad. Wouldn't you be jealous if… no, no, _no_, your Mummy and Father could be alive, just not very nice to you, how is it that I could tell…"

Harry just sat there on his bench, staring at the boy in shock. He was muttering to himself now, finger over his mouth in concentration, which made him look far older than he probably was. The strange boy couldn't have been much older than Harry was – a year at most. Harry had just turned five (no presents, but that was okay, because he was an _entire hand_ old now), which would put the boy at around six.

He looked so similar to Harry, but was somehow nothing like him at all.

While Harry had untameable, messy black hair, the boy had curly, very dark brown hair – brushed like a professional had done it. They both had very unusual eyes – Harry's were bright, curious and the colour of emeralds, yet covered by too-large glasses; the boy's were light, a slivery-blue that made Harry feel like he was having his soul analysed.

Even with the babyish, round features of a child, the boy's cheekbones were very defined. Harry had a strange feeling that when the boy grew up, his cheekbones would be very noticeable. Harry had cheekbones too – and rather defined themselves, the old ladies in the supermarket always said, much to Aunt Petunia's horror – but they only stood out more because of his thin face, and lack of food.

The boy had a thin face too.

The boy looked healthy.

Harry did not.

He couldn't help but notice that.

And, Harry was never all that bothered by what he looked like – it wasn't like being embarrassed would make the Dursleys buy him anything _new_ – but he couldn't help but notice how… how much like that man sitting on the corner of the street (the one with the sleeping bag) he looked like, compared to this boy.

While Harry was the shortest in his year at school, this boy was obviously quite tall, even when he was tangled up like that. While this boy was thin, he was clearly in supreme health (minus his pale skin), but Harry? Harry looked like…well, he looked like he was starved and shoved in a cupboard under the stairs. Which he _was_. While Harry was dressed in rags, the boy was in high-quality trousers and a long, are-you-as-rich-as-me-I-don't-think-so coat.

It hit Harry, in that one moment, just how odd this was.

They were so blindingly alike, but at the same time, opposites. Opposite ends of the social scale (one in rags, one in riches), opposite ends of emotions (one confused, one making sense of the world), opposite ends of a bench (it went without saying).

It was so strange. Whether it was good or bad, Harry had yet to decide.

"What are you talking about?" Harry asked, bringing himself back to the present.

"Oh, _shut up,_ Mycroft, I'm thinking." the boy snapped, not looking around, and Harry flinched back in surprise, "Just because you're _older_, and you go to a _special school,_ doesn't make you better than me! It's not…"

The boy paused, and looked over at Harry again, like he'd suddenly realised that he wasn't talking to this 'Mycroft'. Harry gave him an uncertain, tentative smile. The boy scowled back.

"Your Mummy and Father _are_ dead, aren't they?" he said again, just as demanding, but not as sure of himself as he was previously. He was looking at Harry like he was trying to find the answer in his face. Again, Harry got the feeling of being scanned.

"Yes," Harry found himself replying.

And then, in an instant (Harry might've been more surprised by it, if he hadn't been surprised by this new boy enough already), the boy's frame relaxed. He leaned back onto the armrest of the bench, and looked at Harry in triumph.

"I _knew _it," he declared smugly, "I _told _Mycroft I could do it!"

Harry unknowingly mirrored the boy's position; crossed-legged and facing him, leaning back on the opposite armrest. Now, when a normal child was faced with an older (richer, stronger) boy, especially one that was staring at them intently, all while muttering to himself – their initial instinct is run away, or at least go to their parents.

Harry Potter was not, in any form, a normal child.

Nor was he a runner-awayer, and he didn't have any parents.

He just wanted to know how that boy knew he didn't.

So he asked, "Who's Mycroft?"

Wrong question. Damn.

The boy looked at him with an expression that was similar to being startled. Maybe people _had_ run away from him before. That made Harry feel an overwhelming sadness – kids at school were always doing that to him. Harry just didn't get it; what was it that made him so…so…_freakish?_ At least (and Harry felt a little bit guilty about thinking it), he could see why people might want to run from this boy.

Harry didn't feel the need to run in the slightest.

Perhaps he should have.

"Mycroft's my brother," the strange boy started, slowly, looking at Harry liked he'd broken some sort of unspoken rule, "He's thirteen, and he goes to this_ big, fancy school_ for _clever people_. He always thinks that he know better than me, just 'cause he's older. But he _doesn't_, and you can't say otherwise!"

He glared at Harry fiercely, and Harry nodded quickly, "O-Of course not!"

"Good," said the boy, relaxing back into the armrest, and continuing stubbornly, "'Cause he _doesn't_."

Harry noticed that he had the lowest voice of any child he had ever met, but it seemed to fit the boy. It was posh, definitely, but while he used rather large words for his age, with it's grammar and tone, it was certainly a voice of a child – a rather strange, slightly freaky child, but a child none the less.

Wait… slightly freaky.

_Freaky. _

"_Freak!"_

Harry gasped.

For as long as he could remember, Harry had been declared a 'freak'. He didn't know why. It was just…weird things seemed to happen around him. A broken arm would be healed overnight, a jump behind the rubbish bins resulted in a fly to the top of the roof. It was just so strange…

And if this boy…this boy with his scanning eyes and his smug expression… if this boy was like him…

"Are you a freak, too?" Harry blurted out before common sense could stop him, and the boy flinched back slightly.

There was a pause.

"I am not a freak," the boy started, after the longest, most agonising moment of Harry's life, "I only observe things that others just see. It's called '_De-duc-tive rea-son-ing'_." The boy said, spelling out the long words with pride, his chest swelling.

"Deductive reasoning?" Harry inquired tentatively, extremely embarrassed.

"Well…"

And then he was off – going on about tiny details, and putting pieces together, and he didn't seem to care that Harry was barely keeping up, because _oh, he was so _bored _here, really, why did his mother make him come and visit some smelly old aunt? There were things he could otherwise be doing, things that were much more interesting…_

Harry was just able to nod frantically, and chip in with the occasional, 'Uh-huh' or 'Yep' or 'No, I would not like to be part of your experiment on How A Particularly Average Mind Works, thanks.' Harry found the boy as infuriating as he did fascinating. (When, after that last one, the boy shrugged in a universal gesture of 'whatever, your loss', Harry very nearly just got up and walked away, Aunt Petunia be damned.)

The boy seemed to be at his best when talking about…about experiments, and – and 'deductive reasoning' (and pirates, oddly enough.) His voice became passionate, his eyes had that 'mad-genius' look about them, and the awkward, I'm-not-quite-sure-how-to-talk-to-you-so-I'm-just- going-scan-you-so-you'll-see-my-brilliance boy was replace by a –

Wait.

Hold that thought.

Harry thought that he might have just said something he shouldn't have.

The boy had been going on about some TV show for the past minute or so. Harry was surprised; the boy didn't seem like the type to be sitting around watching television (_when there are so many other, useful things I could be doing – honestly, the world is so _dull _sometimes._) But then Harry just had to open his mouth, his _stupid_ mouth, when the boy had been taking a breath.

"What's Doctor Who?"

And the boy had stopped dead in his tracks.

"_What's Doctor Who?"_ the boy said incredulously, and Harry _knew _he'd said something wrong, because he had found out in last fifteen minutes that the boy hated repetition.

"…Yes?" His answer came out more of a question than a confirmation.

"Well, of course you don't know what it is, your relatives probably never let you watch the television," the boy replied smoothly, his whole attitude changing so fast that Harry blinked in surprise, "Oh, don't look so surprised, I've told you what I do to find out. But, to answer your question, it's the only thing worth watching on the television. It's scientific and not _entirely_ dull, and it's about…"

And so he was off again, and Harry found his head being filled up with Time-Lords, and big blue boxes from the sixties, and monsters, and aliens and _it's scientific, of course, but frankly, sometimes it's just plain ridiculous_. The boy had gotten back into the swing of things, and Harry was started to feel just that little bit jealous of Dudley, and his luxury of being able to watch the television whenever he wanted.

But then, not ten minutes later, the boy heaved a put-upon sigh, and said, "Well, I'd better go back before Mycroft comes looking for me. He does _worry._" The boy sneered towards the end. Flinging himself off the bench dramatically, the boy started to walk away without a backwards glance. Maybe it was bewilderment he felt towards this, that made Harry spill out to his retreating back.

"Does this mean we're friends, then?"

The boy froze, his back still facing Harry. Harry was inwardly beating himself with a hammer. Or anything metal really, something that would knock him out and get out of this situation. Turning around, the boy started retracing his steps, slowly this time, and looking at Harry with a very strange look on his face.

'E-Erm, I'm sorry, I-I mean we were talking, and I just supposed, and – and it was stupid really, wasn't it? W-We don't _have_ to be – you know – _friends_, if you don't want to be, but – but I was just thinking that – that maybe you would like to –"

"I don't have friends," said the boy, almost coldly, and Harry shrank back in his seat, stopping his nervous attempts to cover up for what he'd said.

Still, his insides seemed to wilt in disappointment. He'd thought that maybe, _maybe_, because Dudley wouldn't be able to scare him off at school, the boy might like to be…that they might be able to… well, of course he didn't, it was idiotic of Harry to hope it could happen. It just didn't happen, _couldn't_ happen, even. Because freaks couldn't have friends, and this boy was just clever enough to accept that.

And Harry Potter was a freak, without a shadow of a doubt.

He made flower petals dance, he could jump from the ground to the school roof, and he just _was_ a freak.

It was like a force of nature.

The grass was green, the sky was blue and Harry Potter was a freak.

It wasn't anything to question, it just _was_.

And freaks never, _ever_ had friends.

"Al…Although," the boy voice, surprisingly unsure, rattled through Harry's brain and brought him back to the park, "You are slightly more tolerable than any other child I've met. And if I ever did have a…a friend – which I _won't_ – I would…I would probably want them to resemble…I'd want them to be more like you, rather than those dunderheads that call themselves 'cool'."

Harry looked up, just in time to see an awkward, but genuine smile twitching at the corners of the boy's mouth. He looked more human then he'd ever seemed in the past half-an-hour. (Had it really been that long? It seemed too short…he'd never been able to test it before, but it appeared that time did fly when you were having fun. Harry didn't see how that was remotely fair.)

But then it was gone, and the boy had nodded in such a way that perhaps he didn't quite know what to say. Then he had turned on his shiny-shoed heels, and swept away, his are-you-as-rich-as-me-I-don't-think-so coat flapping along behind him, leaving Harry gaping like a goldfish behind him.

Well…that was…_different_.

It was only then that Harry realised that he had never found out the boy's name.

Bu then, with Aunt Petunia storming towards him, with such a fury on her face, that Harry gulped.

He didn't get to realise anything else that day.


End file.
